


An Uncommon Predicament

by reogulus



Category: Mushishi
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-26
Updated: 2015-01-26
Packaged: 2018-03-09 03:45:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3235070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reogulus/pseuds/reogulus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[Spoilers for Zoku Shou Special "Path of Thorns"]</p>
<p>When Tama left the room to answer Tanyuu’s call, Kumado lay down on the tatami. He could stay like this and stare at the ceiling for weeks, one of the few childhood habits he retained. He wondered what Tanyuu would think of him when he had exhausted the world of things he could feasibly bring to her. He wondered if, on that day, he would unlearn all the so-called standards of wonder and beauty he’d committed to memory.</p>
            </blockquote>





	An Uncommon Predicament

 

 

 

 

On some uninhabited seashore there were fleets of seashells, stretching for miles along the coastline. He heard the rhythmic chirps and warbles, getting more frantic by the minute. He stood there for a while, watching as another flock of birdlike creatures washed up ashore, then picked one up and held it to his ear. It sounded like the heralding of a catastrope, perhaps enough to offer clues for his aimless mission.

He lowered his hand, remembering vaguely that he once brought something similar to the Scribe, the child who was incredulous about his indifference. He considered keeping the shell on him, since the creature was what he believed she would call “cute”. The mushi was waterborne and unlikely to survive travels on land; he thought he might try bringing it to her anyway. If it died, a fancy shell might still be worth a few coins to a shopkeeper in some rich, landlocked village.

He walked a few steps after tucking it away in his medicine box, then stopped and hurled it towards the ocean. The shell flew from his hand, and then was gone.

 

All around him, the fluttering chirps were getting louder. He kept walking.

 

 

 

> **An Uncommon Predicament**

 

The whole truth was that Tanyuu didn't get to know Kumado until he accepted her request of bringing her things collected from his travels. Before she heard the affirmative, Kumado was more like...well, there was nothing she could compare him to. He was unlike anything she'd seen in books; Tanyuu wasn't confident that she would be able to describe him in words. He was the first of anything that caused such uncertainty in her.

Tanyuu managed to ask him about the souvenirs during his third visit to the Archives, with Tama there as well, serving them tea and rice cakes. She was half-expecting a polite decline, and planning how she could use the food as a convenient distraction in that case.

His "yes" came in the same tone a "no" would; that was, without a doubt. In the brief moment that Kumado looked up, Tanyuu saw in his eyes a vivid reflection of her own grin, past the steam that rose from the tea, freshly poured.

"I am really happy," she said.

"Yes," he repeated, bowing his head. She took the tea cup to her palms and sipped, enjoying the warmth as well as the silent feeling of content. Then he said, "I'm happy as well. To be of service."

It was the first time Tanyuu had heard such an expression, and it sounded so strange to her that she forgot to taste the tea before swallowing.

 

※

 

Of course, anything Kumado brought to the Archives was to be inspected by Tama before allowed to be near Tanyuu. Through the years, he made a list of criteria. There were items such as things that Tanyuu might like, things that Tanyuu would definitely like, things that Tama might object to, and things that he'd leave behind. In the ideal situation, anything he’d find on his way would fit into one of the categories without overlap.

The ideal situation did not occur often; that did not come as a surprise. The surprise was that practice did not make perfect as time passed, despite Tanyuu being as easy to excite as ever. By now Kumado had gone to a number of places, enough that most of them started blurring into one another. Travelling did not become a chore as it was not exciting to him in the first place, but maybe he was getting tired, or bored. He hadn’t come across anything that necessitated the ritual in a while.

He talked about this with Tama last time he visited. Tanyuu was busy meeting other mushishi at the time, so Kumado left the souvenirs with the elder Minai, along with some brief notes about the items’ origins. The conclusion was the usual: still no progress on sighting the Forbidden Mushi. The elder woman responded with something along the lines of how Kumado was welcomed to stay at the Archives for some weeks if he needed time to recharge. He declined, stating there was no point. He’d already read all the records on killing mushi stored here.

When Tama left the room to answer Tanyuu’s call, Kumado lay down on the tatami. He could stay like this and stare at the ceiling for weeks, one of the few childhood habits he retained. He wondered what Tanyuu would think of him when he had exhausted the world of things he could feasibly bring to her. He wondered if, on that day, he would unlearn all the so-called standards of wonder and beauty he’d committed to memory.

On that day, he was sure he would still be on his way to somewhere, with just one less place to return to.

 

※

 

The first time Tanyuu felt Kumado was different, afterwards, she asked Tama if she was mistaken. She wanted to be proven wrong.

“He wasn’t always like this, no,” Tama answered. “But that is neither here nor there, really. People change, such is the way of life...please grant him some patience in the process, ojou-sama. That child doesn’t need much else.”

As Tama bowed to her, Tanyuu realized this was the first time her caretaker told her anything about Kumado’s needs. It was also the last time Tama mentioned anything of the sort; since then, Tanyuu had not brought up her unease again, even as every notification of Kumado’s pending visit became uncomfortably suspenseful, right up to the moment he walked into her room.

Even after she’d accepted his occasional foreignness as a casual possibility, Tanyuu still couldn’t help feeling her heart sink whenever she noticed it. She was still not quite sure how she would describe Kumado for who he was, but on some level she knew what he was not; though, there were no words for describing those qualities either.

_Patience,_ she thought to herself. Perhaps patience would lead to enlightenment, in time. Tama said so, too.

 

※

 

Once again he awoke, feeling nothing but the state of his eyes being open.

Ever since Kumado was able to see mushi, he hadn’t needed closing his eyes to sleep. Technically, being awake and being asleep were not really differentiable to him. It was just a matter of letting the image of the moving darkness take over his mind’s eye, or letting other thoughts occupy his mind instead.

Tama was there, of course. It was the usual question: could you move your fingers? Kumado moved them like he was only hearing that instruction for the first time. Except the person asking him seemed to appear older, and wearier than he last remembered. He couldn’t remember very much right now, though.

Kumado looked out the window and saw that it was near dawn. The sound of birds chirping on the trees in the yard made his head hurt, like it resembled something much more deafening and dreadful.

“What’s wrong?” Tama asked.

He turned to look at her. He needed no successors, but Tama would, sooner rather than later.

It would make no difference to him, really. And thus Kumado answered, “No, nothing.”

 

※

 

“Kumado.”

 

They were sitting atop the hill. The breeze ruffled through the blanket of grass, and through the stack of paper on Tanyuu’s lap desk.

“Now, look up a bit more,” she said, dipping the brush pen in ink, then dabbed the tip on the inkstone. Kumado did as he was told. The lines on Tanyuu’s paper barely resembled anything like his face as of yet, but it was all right. She trusted that he could keep whatever pose necessary for however long she needed.

Tanyuu had never been very good at drawing. Most sketches of mushi on the scrolls were only her tracing, and that alone took years of practice. But earlier in the morning, when Kumado walked into her room, looking something like a pale copy of himself. Like it was for all the times before, it began again.

But this time, before he took out whatever he brought back for her from the medicine box, Tanyuu called for him to carry her here, with her pen and paper.

Tanyuu figured if she wouldn’t be able to put him to words any time soon, she could at least make an effort in this manner.

The wind rustled through the grass, the paper, and his sleeves. It was then that she realized, even if she’d captured everything about his likeness on paper, there was no ink dark enough for drawing his eyes.

Tanyuu kept drawing, anyway. Through the rest of her labour, Kumado stayed perfectly still.

 

※

 

He was sitting upright, eyes wide open. Someone asked him to move his fingers. He turned, and saw that it was Tanyuu. It was dark all around them, but he saw stars, far ahead on the horizon in the distance. Underneath him, it was a field of grass instead of tatami.

Tanyuu was there, looking at him. He did not move any part of his body. The small dish set atop the lamp she held with her right hand was already empty. She looked at him, and asked, _are you Kumado?_

When darkness came for him, the very first to surrender was the ability to dream. Nonetheless, Kumado knew this was an illusion because Tama would never let Tanyuu be privy to this, even on her last breath. After all, the only duty of the caretaker was to protect.

He remained silent, as if he hadn’t heard her question. She sat next to him, unmoving like he was, while he fixed his line of sight on the horizon. As time passed, the stars faded into a brightening sky.

He allowed himself to turn to her now, and saw that the lamp, along with the empty dish, had disappeared. And Tanyuu looked younger now; much younger. Always the child in his mind’s eye.

She asked, without turning to look at him: “Isn’t the sunrise beautiful?”

This, Kumado knew, was not a dream. As he closed his eyes, he heard himself say, “yes.”

 

 

 

 

When he opened his eyes again, he was sitting up on the tatami, alone in the room. Under the moonlight, Kumado saw that the portrait Tanyuu drew during the day had been mounted, and was set next to his medicine box.

 

He went back to sleep.

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> and thus begins my foray into the mushishi fandom! my first fic of 2015, completed with surprising efficiency--what a wonderful, wretched ship of atypical symbiosis.


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